Attributes
Attributes are the core stats of a character that determine things like the skills you can get, your success chances for certain abilities or your ability to resist certain ailments. Strength "Your strength score determines how effectively you penetrate your opponents' armor with melee attacks, how much damage your melee attacks do, your ability to resist forced movement, and your carry capacity." Notes Strength is important for a lot of melee characters that do not plan to go for agility based melee weapons (Short Blades) and will let you carry more heavier equipment to raise your Armor Value to decent levels to compete in late game. Skills Jump, Whack, Trip, Dismember, Cleave, Hook and Drag, Decapitate, Berserk, Kickback, Bludgeon, Charging Strike, Clobber, Barrage, Slam, Bonecrusher, Strapping Shoulders, Tank, Sweep, Lunge, Gorging Lunges, Scorpiok Mastery, Swipe, Mighty Swipes, Windmill Mastery, Shield Slam, Staggering Block and Charge. Agility "Your agility score determines your accuracy with both melee and ranged weapons and your ability to dodge attacks." Notes Agility is very useful for any melee and ranged character as it increases chance to hit. It also contributes to defence in the form of increasing Dodge Value. It can also increase Penetration Value of short blades, which makes it one of the strongest options for melee as of now. Skills Swift Reflexes, Spry, Tumble, Butcher, Steady Hands, Draw a Bead, Suppressive Fire, Flattening Fire, Wounding Fire, Disorienting Fire, Sure Fire, Beacon Fire, Ultra Fire, Flurry, Offhand Strikes, Ambidexterity, Two Weapon Fighting, Steady Hand, Akimbo, Weak Spotter, Sling and Run, Disarming Shot, Dead Shot, Empty the Clips, Fastest Gun in the Rust, Deft Blocking, Swift Blocking, Hobble, Jab, Bloodletter, Shank, Pointed Circle, Rejoinder, Hurdle and Juke. Toughness "Your toughness score determines your number of hit points, your hit point regeneration rate, and your ability to resist poison and disease" Notes Toughness is very important stats as it affects the amount of Hit Points you get per level and some of the more useful skills are unlocked by having decent toughness. You can never go wrong with extra health. Skills Swimming, Poison Tolerance, Weathered, Juicer, Calloused and Longstrider. Intelligence "Your intelligence score determines your number of skill points and your ability to examine artifacts." Notes Having decent or high intelligence can help you survive more easily early on in the game as you can unlock important skills earlier. Not to mention that it helps to identify artifacts and create/modify them with the tinker skill. Skills Skillful Butchery, Masterful Butchery, Heal, Set Limb, Harvest, Skillful Harvestry, Masterful Harvestry, Gadget Inspector, Disassemble, Reverse Engineer, Scavenger, Repair, Deploy Turret, Lay Mine/Set Bomb, Tinker I, Tinker II, Tinker III, Mind's Compass, Wilderness Lore: Plains, Wilderness Lore: Marshes, Wilderness Lore: Mountains, Wilderness Lore: Canyons, Wilderness Lore: Jungles, Wilderness Lore: Salt Pans and Wilderness Lore: Ruins. Willpower "Your willpower score determines the frequency with which you may use your mental mutations, your hit point regeneration rate, and your ability to resist mental attacks." Notes Willpower is very important for Esper/Esper-like mutants as it is required to lower cooldown on mental mutations. Other than that it isn't very useful for most characters as it only unlocks some skills and protects from mental attacks that most are already hard resist. Skills Fasting Way, Iron Mind, Lionheart, Conatus, Mind Over Body and Shield Wall. Ego "Your ego score determines the potency of your mental mutations, your ability to haggle with merchants, and your ability to dominate the wills of other living creatures." Notes Ego is another very important Esper/Esper-like mutants, because it can boost mental mutations over their level 10 cap. Other than that it is useful for extra profit when trading with merchants. This can be useful if you plan on investing skill points in Tinker II and Tinker III as higher tier data disks cost a lot. The effects of Ego on merchant buy and sell prices are modeled below. An ego bonus above +9 (including the effective +2 from Snake Oiler, if applicable) has no effect. Skills Offer Gift, Menacing Stare, Intimidate, Berate, Snake Oiler, Proselytize and Inspiring Presence.